publishing – The Saturday Evening Posthttp://www.saturdayeveningpost.com
Home of The Saturday Evening PostWed, 13 Dec 2017 22:30:24 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.8.4Death of a Sales Scheme: Encyclopedia Shysters of the Door-to-Door Agehttp://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2017/08/30/culture/death-sales-scheme-encyclopedia-shysters-door-door-age.html
Wed, 30 Aug 2017 20:04:32 +0000http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/?p=125816May I trick you into buying a set of encyclopedias?

]]>Moses Pray, Ryan O’Neal’s character in 1973’s Paper Moon, cons recent widows into buying holy books with the claim that their deceased dears had put in an order shortly before passing. The heinous trick plays on the poor women’s grief and belief, powerful sentiments ripe for exploitation.

Another powerful sentiment is the wish for one’s children to grow up with culture and knowledge. It might not sell bibles; but the desire for prominence was once co-opted to peddle a pricier set of books.

Encyclopædia Britannica was in a hole when Sears, Roebuck & Co. took over the title in 1920. Britannica was sold mostly by mail-order at the time, and it only released a new edition every 25 years or so. The Post’s two-part series “160 Miles of Words” from 1945 tells the quirks and disparities of publishing such a monumental work as well as the transformation of its business practices after Sears’ secretary and treasurer E. Harrison Powell stood at the helm: “Powell started from scratch to build an outside sales organization and establish branch sales offices in key cities of the country. Sales began to go up. But strange letters of complaint also began to come into the Britannica home offices in Chicago.”

Powell — perhaps unintentionally — had employed some “old book” salesmen in his staff, and the shysters used their own tricks to get the job done: “One of their favorite methods was the giveaway, or “you-have-been-selected” trick. They would visit a prospect and tell him: ‘The Encyclopædia Britannica is initiating a new advertising campaign, and as one of the most prominent citizens of your community, we have selected you to receive a set of the Britannica free — absolutely without any cost to you.” The word “free” was as much of a misnomer as “Britannica” (the book has never been published in England) since the promise was soon followed with an offer for the newly-introduced subscriptions. The total price proved to be no bargain after all.

Powell revamped his sales department after the “shock” of discovering its unsavory business practices, and he called in a new manager to institute a rigid, thorough program for direct sales. The new protocol declared, “Appointments are made by telephone, either in the prospect’s office or in his home. If it is a home appointment, the salesman makes it clear to Mrs. Prospect that he wants to see her when Mr. Prospect is at home, so that he may talk to both of them together.”

The story of sales deception ends there, at least in the Post article. But misleading encyclopedia sales tactics never really disappeared. According to a 1968 New Republic story, all of the major encyclopedia companies have seen run-ins with the Federal Trade Commission over deceptive sales tactics as well as specious hiring ads. Britannica received a cease-and-desist order from the FTC in 1961 and a complaint in 1976. The latter claimed the book giant was misrepresenting sales jobs as advertising analysis and public relations. Furthermore, Britannica was promising salaries for their salesmen that just didn’t add up. One FTC violation sounds familiar: “Persons engaged by respondent do not contact people in their homes primarily for the purposes represented by respondents.”

Of course, Encyclopædia Britannica has ceased printing its volumes. Who needs 129 pounds of information on the shelf when you can scroll through it for free on a screen? Sure, it was authoritative, but just as Wikipedia receives flack for occasional absurdities and falsehoods, Britannica faced a learning curve with its card catalog when green editors “classified Virginia Reel under biography, Defense Mechanism under military, Gallstones under geology, Incest under business and industry, and Pope Innocent under law.”

The days of slick, smooth-talking men promising the social status only an encyclopedia set can bring to stay-at-home moms are over. Besides, people have other ways of signifying prominence these days. Unfortunately, most of them have nothing to do with knowledge.

]]>Dear Mr. Thoreau…http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2017/07/12/humor/dear-mr-thoreau.html
http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2017/07/12/humor/dear-mr-thoreau.html#commentsWed, 12 Jul 2017 15:49:58 +0000http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/?p=124233What would Henry David Thoreau have made of the modern book publishing process?

]]>What would Henry David Thoreau, born 200 years ago today, make of our modern society, brimming with on-demand, instant-response, electronic incivilities at every turn? In 1854, Thoreau believed that “Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify.” And so he did, living alone in the woods to think, write, and step to the music he alone heard.

In 1968, the Post editors similarly speculated what Thoreau would make of their modern era, and whipped up this faux-correspondence between the philosopher and an ambitious book editor hungry for a bestseller.

From the October 5, 1968, issue of the Post.

In 1854, when Henry David Thoreau’s Walden was first printed, fewer than 2,000 copies were sold. Would his book fail today? Probably not. A modern publisher’s correspondence with Mr. Thoreau might read:

Dear Mr. Thoreau:

I am pleased to inform you that Flimbind and Shipp is accepting Walden for publication. Please sign and return the enclosed contract. Your book should be a real seller, as back-to-nature books are big this season.

Sincerely yours,

JAMES TRUSLOW FLIMBIND

Dear Mr. Thoreau:

Thank you for the prompt return of the contract. Your check for $200 advance payment is enclosed.

Work on Walden is moving ahead. I have assigned “Slash” Hartman, one of our best rewrite men, to you.

Sincerely yours,

JAMES TRUSLOW FLIMBIND

Dear Mr. Thoreau:

I regret that my last letter upset you. We rewrite all our manuscripts before publication, but only to heighten effect and tighten up the prose. As to your fears concerning Mr. Hartman: “Slash” refers not to Mr. Hartman’s editing technique, but to a scar on his face, a souvenir of his reporting days.

I am enclosing a preliminary cover for your inspection. We feel that the woman in the mist will enhance the book’s pull.

Sincerely,

JAMES TRUSLOW FLIMBIND

Dear Mr. Thoreau:

My patience is wearing thin, H.T., after your last diatribe. I do not rewrite books out of malice but because I know what the American public wants. I feel that your comment, “flaunting a naked woman on the cover of a serious philosophic work,” is unjust. The mist covers her up pretty well. If you wish, I’ll have the artist thicken up the fog around the breasts.

Sincerely yours,

JAMES TRUSLOW FLIMBIND

Dear Mr. Thoreau:

Hank, I’m not going to attempt to answer the charges in your last letter. The revised version of Walden has been sold to Amalgamated Films for $50,000. A check for your share, $2,500, is enclosed. That should keep you in Indian meal for a while.

Amalgamated will probably title the musical either I Was a Teen-age Recluse or Walden, Baby. Verna Lush has been signed for the female lead.

Sincerely yours,

JAMES TRUSLOW FLIMBIND

Dear Mr. Thoreau:

I think that the near hysteria of your last letter is unjustified. Verna Lush will play the barmaid, an addition made by Slash to give the book more impact. However, the love scene in the woods will not be in the film, as every effort is being made to keep it a family picture. The big dance number on ice, Walden Is a Winter Wonderland, will be filmed on location at your pond. As for the payment, five percent on movie rights is standard for new authors.

To quote a line from your original manuscript, “Money is not required to buy one necessary of the soul.”

Sincerely yours,

JAMES TRUSLOW FLIMBIND

Dear Mr. Emerson: I appreciate your writing so frankly about Mr. Thoreau’s tragic death. Although none of us at Flimbind ever met him, we felt that we knew him well.

The movie-making activities on the ice of Walden Pond could not have hastened Mr. Thoreau’s death. Any author having the opportunity to see his work come to life as an Amalgamated production should have been spurred to recovery rather than lapsing into the decline that you described.

One final matter. I have scanned a couple of your latest books, and I think that Anemia Press has not done well by you. There is now a slot open at Flimbind for one philosophy author. Why not come aboard, Ralph?

]]>http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2017/07/12/humor/dear-mr-thoreau.html/feed1Are Books Really Here to Stay?http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2013/04/27/history/post-perspective/future-of-book-publishing.html
Sat, 27 Apr 2013 12:00:18 +0000http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/?p=85086The fear that book publishing will disappear has been around for more than a century.

The question would have been unthinkable not very long ago. Today, it’s worth asking because there’s the possibility that electronic books will outgrow and replace printed books. The first electronic book reader was introduced in 2006. Five years later e-books began to outsell printed books.

While digital publishing seems to be growing, the printed book industry is continuing its long decline. Countless independent bookstores have vanished from the American landscape, followed by the demise of the Border’s bookstore chain in 2011. Now, most Americans live within driving distance of only one bookstore—Barnes & Noble—and that company’s health is not exactly robust. (The company plans to close 20 of its stores every year for the next decade.)

However, the fear that book publishing will disappear has been around for more than a century. Back in 1958, for example, this fear prompted American Publisher Bennett Cerf to write “Books Are Here To Stay.” He was writing in response to the concern of parents, educators, and publishers that young Americans were becoming addicted to television. Kids, they said, showed no interest in reading but remained glued to the tube all day. Soon the great publishing houses would shut down, they assumed, and books would start to disappear from the American home.

But Cerf saw things differently, and he knew what he was talking about. He had run Random House publishing for 30 years, and could assure Post readers that “publishers cry more easily than anybody else on earth. … To hear them tell it, there’s always something threatening to bankrupt half the publishers extant. Television is merely their latest bugaboo.”

And then, interestingly, Cerf told us several things that were going to destroy publishing before television.

In the 1900s, he said, a New York publisher prophesied that interurban trolley cars would bring about the end of reading in America. The new trolley lines being built in those days allowed Americans to easily commute between the country and the city. They also permitted the youth to go joyriding for a day, taking a trolley from Chicago to Milwaukee, for example, or Philadelphia to Atlantic City, New Jersey. What youngsters, the publisher asked, would be content with books if they could ride for hours in a trolley car?

Even before the interurban lines were bearing youths away from their books, Cerf said, the bicycle was going to kill the book. Young men and women of the 1890s spent all their free time on bicycles, even taking 100-mile, weekend-long rides, leaving them no time or energy to read.

In the first few decades of the 20th century, books faced growing competition from the phonograph, the radio, and the affordable Model T that seemed to consume more and more of the average American’s time.

Yet with all these alternatives to reading, the popularity of books continued to grow. The Book Of The Month Club, founded 83 years ago this month, proved immensely popular. Between 1926 and 1929, membership grew from 2,000 to 100,000.

Today we are far from seeing the end of publishing. More than a million new titles are produced every year, including over 200,000 self-published books. This latter number is misleading, though, since many of these ‘books’ are purely digital and will never see a single sheet of paper.

Book lovers, on the other hand, are enchanted by the feel of a cloth binding, the scent of the pages, and crisp, dark type on white paper. They’ll spend fortunes on books, and care for them tenderly, and might even read some of them.

For lovers of reading, the future has never been better. More people are reading and writing than ever before, and the Web offers an endless supply of new, unexpected material. But for book lovers, the future does not look promising. The number of bookstores, and the size of their inventory, are not likely to grow. However, book lovers should take comfort in the fact that no form of entertainment has ever disappeared. The Internet hasn’t replaced television, which didn’t replace radio, which didn’t replace movies, which didn’t replace the theater, etc. Americans are continually rediscovering and reviving old entertainments and crafts.

We will see fewer large-inventory bookstores in the future, but a growth of print-on-demand (POD) publishers. These small, independent operations will print and bind any book of your choice. You can get the title you want in minutes, and the POD operation doesn’t have to pay the costs of maintaining an inventory of unsold titles.

The good news is that book publishing won’t disappear. The better news is that Americans today are reading more than ever.

]]>The King James Bible: A Best-Seller Turns 400http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2011/03/25/history/post-perspective/king-james-bible-a-best-seller-turns-400.html
http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2011/03/25/history/post-perspective/king-james-bible-a-best-seller-turns-400.html#commentsFri, 25 Mar 2011 17:02:18 +0000http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/?p=31637Hoping to unify the Protestants in England, King James I commissioned a work whose influence moved beyond the church, the country, and the times he intended.

]]>Since its publication 400 years ago this year, the King James Bible has become the most frequently quoted version of the Old and New Testament among English speaking people. Its style has become so widely accepted that many Christians have come to view other translations as flawed or even sacrilegious.

There are several reasons why Protestant Christians still rely on a translation made four centuries ago. There is tradition and familiarity. But there is also the power of the English language used in this work.

By good luck, or by the grace of God, King James commissioned this translation at a time when the expressive power of English was undergoing an incredible growth. As a 1951 Post article noted, the King’s translators proved highly creative in setting the biblical language of Aramaic and Greek into

the haunting phrases [that have] imprinted so deeply on the thoughts and imagery of all English-speaking people: “apple of his eye,” “powers that be,” “widow’s mite,” “filthy lucre,” “as a lamb to the slaughter,” “pearls before swine,” “worthy of his hire,” “broken reed,” “birds of the air,” “loaves and fishes,” “army with banners,” “clear as crystal,” “thorn in the flesh,” “still small voice,” “salt of the earth” —these are only a few.

The King’s goal was to produce a skilled, consistent, and rigorously edited version of scriptures (an earlier English translation of the Old Testament had included the commandment, “Thou shalt commit adultery.”) In the process, though, his scholars created a masterwork that influenced all writers of English for centuries. The power of its message, set to its best advantage amid the imagery and cadence of deathless poetry, could reach out beyond the faithful to touch agnostics and non-believers.

Abraham Lincoln is a good example. He openly challenged the teachings of the Christian faith as a young man. He firmly refused offers to pray with others. He purposely eliminated the word “God” from his speeches, preferring the ambiguous term, “Maker.” And he professed no faith in any life after death. Yet as the Post article, “How Well Do You Know the Bible?” notes, Lincoln might have been—

the President who read the Bible most in office was Lincoln; the White House guards used to find him, before he had had breakfast in the morning, turning the pages of his Bible in the small room he used for a library.

He had read the whole Bible and memorized long pas­sages from it. Its words and phrases came frequently and effectively from his lips in speeches, political de­bates, and even casual conversation. Once, at a Cabinet meeting where his advisers were discussing the new green­back dollar bills that were issued during the Civil War, the question came up of what official slogan to print on them.

“In God we trust,” was suggested, but Lincoln had a more whimsical idea. “If you are going to put a legend on the greenbacks,” he said, “I would suggest that of Peter: ‘Silver and gold have I none; but such as I have give I thee,”’ quoting Acts iii. 6 verbatim.

Lincoln’s two greatest utterances, the Gettysburg Address and the Second Inaugural, are filled with the rich word poetry of the King James Version, and we have the almost unanimous word of his biographers that he found the Bible his principal solace at a time when the nation he headed was undergoing its most terrible internal trials. In the summer of 1864, when he was living in a cottage at the Soldiers’ Home on the outskirts of Washington, a friend named Joshua. Speed entered his room unexpectedly and found the President sitting near the window, read­ing his Bible by the light of failing day.

“I am glad to see you so profitably engaged,” remarked Speed, with a touch of lightness. .

“Yes,” said Lincoln. “I am profit­ably engaged.”

“Well,” said Speed, “if you have recovered from your skepticism I am sorry to say I have not.”

The tall President rose from his chair, placed his hand on his friend’s shoulder, and looked him earnestly in the eye. “You are wrong, Speed,” he said. “Take all of this book upon rea­son that you can, and the balance on faith, and you will live and die a hap­pier and better man.”

]]>http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2011/03/25/history/post-perspective/king-james-bible-a-best-seller-turns-400.html/feed1The Book of Numbershttp://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2010/02/20/history/post-perspective/book-numbers.html
http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2010/02/20/history/post-perspective/book-numbers.html#commentsWed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/?p=18728Those of you who joined us in the last 20 years probably don't know how much previous generations relied on telephone directories.

Once, it was the all-important guide to the city. Phone companies distributed their books everywhere, with a thoroughness that even the Gideons would admire.

It was the progenitor of search engines—your sole guide to the virtual world of telephones. It was how you found the number for muffler shops, the sanitation department, and that girl in your chemistry class. Every home and business received one updated copy every year, which was kept close by telephones, which, in those days, were leashed to the wall. By the time a directory was replaced, it would be dog-eared and tattered, bescribbled and bedoodled.

This week marks the anniversary of the first phone directory, issued in New Haven, Connecticut, on February 21, 1878. It listed the numbers of 11 homes, 38 businesses, and the Police Department. By 1910, America’s telephone books were keeping track of 7,000,000 phone numbers. Directories became even more important when automatic switching became widespread a few years later; allowing callers to find a number and dial their party directly without help from an operator.

In 1954 the Post printed “Sixty Million Headaches Every Year” by Henry and Katherine Pringle. It described how incredibly complex the task of producing America’s phone books was.

The chief headache, the Pringles explained, was hand-checking the accuracy of every name and number. Another challenge was distributing the massive volumes. A third was the immense costs of production. Bell Telephone executives estimated “the cost of publishing and delivering a directory the size of a Manhattan book is approximately $1.50.”

Scattered throughout the story of how phone companies updated and replaced directories are several historical details of interest.

“Otherwise civilized people have a deplorable habit of tearing out pages at booths and in hotel rooms instead of copying down the numbers. A staff of inspectors roam such busy centers as railroad and bus stations to see if directory replacements are necessary. At New York’s Grand Central Terminal fresh books are required every forty-eight hours. And nothing much can be done to stop people from tearing pages out of the directors for use as confetti when a parade is staged for some returning hero. A record was chalked up on Gertrude Ederle’s triumphant arrival to New York after she swam the English Channel in 1926. The shredded pages of 5,000 directories were showered on her at a cost, in those inexpensive days, of a couple of thousand dollars. The New York Telephone Company, which had to supply new books, still shudders at the memory.”

The Pringles quote “instructions for the proper use of instruments” in an early phone directory.

“‘When you are called from the Central Office, answer by ringing your bell the same number of times as your call, i.e., if your call is three, answer three: then turn the switch to the right and use your telephone. Speak clearly and distinctly, with your lips gently TOUCHING the telephone.’

“Instructions for use are less involved today, but they are still quite specific. The summer, 1953, directory for Cascade, Montana, lists only 182 names, but a word of warning inside the cover indicates that men are still men in the shadow of the Rocky Mountain:

“‘Profane or obscene language over the company’s wires is prohibited… Failure to observe this will constitute cause for discontinuing service.'”

The number of telephone books published each year has risen since 1954, as you might expect: from 60 million to 615 million. Even as Americans are turning to the Internet as their prime source of information, phone book producers are distributing more directories than ever before. Residents in most cities receive more than one set a year, broken into multiple volumes for neighborhoods. Often a new set arrives before the old set has been used.

There is a concern about the environmental affect of old telephone books. Heavy ink saturation on the pages, low-grade paper, and the glued binding prevent them from disintegrating like other paper products. Some recycling programs refuse to accept them. Yet the industry produces, according to a Louisville reporter’s calculation, over 1 million tons of phone books each year.

The Yellow Pages Association reports that business is good. All those millions of directories last year, they say, generated revenues of $13.9 billion, according to an article from slate.com. Slate’s reporter calculated “that’s more than $22 in revenue per copy. And, what’s more, those revenue figures are growing.”

Like direct-mail advertising, telephone books will continue to arrive at your address, unbidden, so long as they are profitable.

]]>Occasionally, we come across a small treasure in our archives or a forgotten spot in the office building. This was the case recently when we came across a box of over 30 tiny Post Yarns in perfect condition. What are “Post Yarns”? They are tiny magazines, smaller than an index card and 64 pages long. The pocket-size booklets were distributed by American industry, the American Red Cross, chaplains, churches, and other organizations to the tune of 10,000,000 copies to servicemen and women in every zone of operation throughout the world.

The cartoons may be a little corny or considered politically incorrect today (the dangers of women drivers, the problems of cigarette rationing), but they were a treat for soldiers overseas during World War II. Tiny as they were, the booklets contained three selections from the full-sized Saturday Evening Post, a mixture of articles and short stories, which could fit into a uniform shirt pocket. According to the Post editors, these pieces were not condensed articles, or “literary C rations.” By leaving out advertising, the Post was able to get a lot in a tiny package.

Although servicemen referred to them as “dehydrated Posts,” they were immensely grateful for them. “It is seldom that we G.I.’s over here in Burma have the time to write all the letters that we often plan to. However, I must take this moment to tell you how much pleasure is derived from reading these Post Yarns which you are sending overseas to us,” one wrote. “This little booklet is just the answer for a quick snack of reading out in the field after chow or during a few minutes of rest anywhere.” Another wrote, “Recently, a rather battered copy of Post Yarns came into my possession. After reading the three stories it contained, I became quite curious about this excellent publication. I traced back through the fellow who gave it to me as well as I could. I found that eight of my shipmates had read it before me. None of them knew how it got aboard or where it came from.”

The complete set.

“It was a good idea,” the Post editors wrote in 1946, “and we’re proud of our share in it, but there are single letters in our files which would dampen any tendency toward preening. We had a good many letters from uncomplaining men who found the little books especially useful because these readers cannot handle a book requiring two hands.”

Some letters gave pause for other reasons. A paratrooper wrote that he read them “to help relieve the tension” just before making a jump. Another soldier guarding a building noted that they were “easy to carry, easy to read, and easy to hide from the officer of the watch.”

The Saturday Evening Post was happy to report in the June 22, 1946 issue that Post Yarns had gone to press for the last time. “Thousands of its readers,” they cheerfully noted, “no longer are wearing the shirts that the edition was designed for. And they aren’t doing their reading under the special and outlandish conditions which made Post Yarns popular.”

]]>http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2010/02/12/archives/clippings-curiosities/gis-shirt-pocket.html/feed1E-Books: A Good Readhttp://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2009/08/26/trends-and-opinions/ebooks-good-read.html
http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2009/08/26/trends-and-opinions/ebooks-good-read.html#commentsWed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/?p=10142The biggest hurdle e-readers face is the suspension of disbelief. No one, says Andrew Sivori of Sony, ever thinks an e-book reader is going to be as good as a book. Then they try one. Like a monk holding a Gutenberg Bible, they realize everything changes.

]]>If you haven’t gone to the bookstore lately, it might be a good idea to call before heading over. That’s because if your favorite bookseller is, say, Ann Arbor, Michigan’s Shaman Drum Bookshop, or even just your local Borders, it may have just gone out of business.

The Shaman Drum wasn’t just a store, but, to one Ann Arbor bibliophile, part of the community’s “intellectual life.” For readers of all ages, the bookstore is a cultural touchstone. Its gradual disappearance seems cause for alarm and even panic. What is a country without its books?

Yet reading, paradoxically, is more popular than ever. Books are sold everywhere, including on the Internet. Hit books — such as J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series — sell millions more copies than bestsellers did just a decade ago. We are still a reading nation. What’s changing is the very definition of what a book is.

“I’m embarrassed to say that I’ve gone from a lifelong hoarder of books to a profligate book-dumper,” says my friend Bob, a voracious reader. He’s figuring out what to put on his bookshelves, and whether to even call them that anymore, thanks to the rise of the electronic book reader. In the short time they’ve been widely available, about a million readers have purchased one and downloaded millions more books to read. It’s no stretch to say e-book readers are already the equivalent of a New York Times bestseller.

It was 1997 when MIT professor Joseph Jacobson founded E Ink Corporation. E Ink displays are nearly as flat as an ordinary piece of paper and draw very little power. It’s these traits that make E Ink displays nearly perfect as a reading medium.E Ink instantly captured the attention of futurists, but it would take several more years and technological breakthroughs to turn E Ink into something that would feel and act like a computerized book.

That’s why Amazon’s Kindle family, at the forefront of e-book innovation, is barely two years old. Amazon, founded by Jeff Bezos, a Princeton educated hedge fund manager turned entrepreneur, has made a business out of disrupting established industries, even his own.

Bezos made Amazon the world’s largest bookstore, even while Borders, Barnes & Noble, and the Shaman Drum Bookshop were all going strong. Today, Amazon sells thousands of other items. It turns out that bookselling was how Bezos perfected a new type of shopping: an Internet-based, home-delivered, customer service-oriented model that changed the way millions of Americans buy the things they want and need.

Customers could buy the latest James Patterson book on Monday and be reading it on Tuesday. It seemed perfect. But Bezos, knowing the book business was in trouble, thanks to high costs and slim profits, decided to reinvent it himself. “Bezos looked at this and said, ‘We have to do this now because no one else will,’ ” says Marion Maneker, former publisher of HarperBusiness and writer for TheBigMoney.com’s “The Kindle Chronicles.”

Sony has two e-book readers—Reader Pocket Edition and Reader Touch Edition (shown here in red) that must be plugged into a computer, for those who enjoy such tinkering. Photo courtesy Sony Electronics, Inc.

Amazon’s Kindle uses a wireless service called Whispernet to connect to the Kindle bookstore, where many of the 300,000 books are just $9.99, and thousands of classics are free. Of course, they’re not books — they’re files wirelessly sent to your Kindle. “You can think of a book and have it 60 seconds later,” says Bezos.
You can also buy subscriptions to newspapers, magazines, and favorite Web sites. The latest Kindle, the DX ($489 as of June 2009), has the largest screen of any reader, almost as big as a sheet of letter paper. It holds over 3,500 books in memory. There is also the smaller Kindle 2 ($299 as of July 2009), which has a paperback-sized screen. Both are about as thick as a weekly newsmagazine and a little heavier. The battery lasts up to two weeks on one charge.

The Kindle will never be the same as a book. But as Bob says, “The Kindle makes reading easier, faster, more enjoyable and yes, cheaper.” Bob, I should note, is a midcareer editor as addicted to the printed word as anyone I know. His adoption of the Kindle makes me think that I, who grew up on the cusp of the Internet Revolution, almost missed the boat! But the more time I spend with the Kindle, the more I agree with him when he says, “I thought I loved books. After I bought my Kindle, I realized that what I really loved was reading.”

Even though you can plug the Kindle into your computer, it’s simpler to use it as a stand-alone device. But Sony has two e-book readers—Reader Pocket Edition ($199.99 as of August 09) and Reader Touch Edition ($299.99 as of August 09) that must be plugged into a computer, for those who enjoy such tinkering.

Whether you bought Eat, Pray, Love from Sony’s online bookstore or downloaded War and Peace free from Project Gutenberg, using Sony’s software, you can transfer both onto the Sony Readers, which can each store 350 books.

Amazon and Sony, with their brand recognition, claim the largest market share of e-readers, but that could change. Hearst, the magazine and newspaper publisher, is developing a competing device. And a company called Plastic Logic has teamed up with Barnes & Noble. Don’t worry; the reader you pick won’t limit your reading material, says Matt Shatz, vice president of digital operations for Random House. “We want to enable authors to be read by as many people as possible,” a view shared by all major publishers.

Best of all, you may not even have to buy a device in order to use one. The next time you stay in a high-end hotel or fly on a plane, a reader preloaded with your favorite newspapers and magazines might be waiting for you as a courtesy. Or, your son or granddaughter could bring one home from school: Amazon is conducting five college trials with students whose textbooks are all on the Kindle.

Think of the millions of pages of saved paper, the thousands of idle trucks, the barrels of unspilt ink: It’s clear that e-book readers are not just black and white, but green, as in good for the environment.

Amazon, Sony, and others want voracious readers of every age and technical ability to be their customers, so they are focused on usability. Their devices are so new it’s unfair to say none are perfect. But they are always usable and sometimes brilliant. All the companies I spoke with say their readers are meant for anybody who loves the printed word.

If you’re not in any rush to buy one, the next generation of readers could sport color screens in less than a year. And Apple is preparing to launch an “iTablet” — part iPod, part reader — as soon as this Christmas. The more big companies competing, the cheaper and better e-books will become.

The biggest hurdle e-readers face is the suspension of disbelief. No one, says Andrew Sivori of Sony, ever thinks an e-book reader is going to be as good as a book. Then they try one. Like a monk holding a Gutenberg Bible, they realize everything changes.